Fish Head Crab Bee Hoon 鱼头蟹米粉

The good thing about buying seafood from the fish market here is they are very generous! The fishmonger always throw a few more smaller fishes into my plastic bag after they have weigh the good we selected. I got many free small crabs, may be just half of my palm from the fishmonger too. 

I have a few big red snapper fish heads sitting in my freezer, as they have taken up lot of freezer space, I decided to clear some of them by cook-up the Fish Head Crab Bee Hoon dish.

The recipe is using my previous Fish Head Soup with adding four small crabs in it. By the way, I cut the crab into half to clean them, when taking photo I placed two side together and covered it with the shell so it looks nicer! I'm not that lazy, ok! Lol! This type of a-pot-dish is easy, fast and delicious! 

Ingredients:
3 big fish heads (1 kg), wash and cut into big chunk (not too small)
4 small flower crabs (half palm size, de-shell, halved and cleaned)
150g carrot ~1 big carrot, cut into thick chunks
1 inch ginger, thinly sliced
2 stalks spring onion, cut into short length 
2 big tomatoes, cut into quarter
150g salted vegetable, thinly slices 
cooking oil to fry the fish head
3 litre of water

some rice vermicelli, blanch in boiling water for 2 mins.

Seasoning:
1/2 tbsp salt (to taste)
a dash of freshly ground black pepper
100ml sake or any cooking wine 

Method:

1. Heat the deep soup pot with some cooking oil (~400ml, depends on the size of your fish and pot), deep fry the fish head until it is cooked or the fish skin turns golden brown. Take the fish head out from pot. 

2. Pour the oil out from the soup pot (This is important to ensure the broth is not oily) and left with a bit of oil just enough to fry the ginger, fry the sliced ginger for 2 mins. 

3. Pour in the water, add the fried fish heads, flower crabs, carrot, salted vegetable, tomatoes, and spring onion. When the water is boiling, add the sake or cooking wine, turn the heat to medium low continue simmer it for another 30 mins. Add the salt and pepper to taste. 

4. Assemble: Place the cooked rice vermicelli in a bowl, pour in the fish head crab soup to cover the rice vermicelli. Place some fish and flower crabs on top, garnish with spring onion. Serve hot.